


Adrift

by Dolorosa



Category: Galax-Arena - Gillian Rubinstein, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Troy Game - Sara Douglass
Genre: Gen, Post-Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A multi-fandom fic about the things we carry into death, and how to let them go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks go to my beta, thelxiepia, who is all kinds of wonderful. Any mistakes remaining are my own.

'I think,' Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, 'that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn’t do. All that I might’ve been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.' – Ursula Le Guin, _The Other Wind._

~

Four pairs of eyes snapped open. Four heads jerked upwards, to take in their surroundings. Four people sat up, swiftly, tensely, warily.

The dark-haired woman was the first to react.

'Weyland!' she shouted, stretching her hand out as if to reclaim something that had slipped out of her grasp. 

'Weyland!' she yelled again. 'Weyland!' And then, hopelessly, in a softer voice, 'Asterion?'

The man sitting next to her had been clutching his neck, looking around him with wild, black eyes. After several moments, he removed his hands from his throat, looking confused, as if a wound which he had been desperately staunching had vanished. He drew a little further away from the others with a look of distaste.

The teenage boy opposite him sat very still, looking around at the others with wary, suspicious eyes. His posture was perfect as he surveyed his companions and surroundings, taking in the woman's fearful expression, the man's angry glare, the young girl curled up, sobbing, in the furthest corner of the raft.

'Who are you people, and where the _hell_ are we?' he asked.

The woman continued to mumble 'Weyland, Weyland,' like a mantra, and the girl continued to tremble and cry. The man looked at him disdainfully for several moments before deciding to answer.

'I would have thought it was perfectly obvious. We're on a raft, in the middle of a calm ocean, with no land in sight.' 

He pushed his long, lank hair out of his face, as if for emphasis.

'The important question, which apparently has failed to occur to you, is _why_.'

The young woman stopped her muttering for a moment, and gazed at her surroundings in wonder, as if taking them in for the first time. Then, hesitantly, she spoke, directing her worlds at the dark-haired older man.

'This is...this is very odd. Are you - aren't you, well, you know...?'

'Clear as mud,' muttered the boy, rolling his eyes.

'I thought I was,' said the man to the woman. 'But, I mean' - here hesitancy crept into his voice for the first time - 'shouldn't there be, well, _nothing_? An absence of consciousness? Not rafts and ocean and three complete strangers?'

'I would've thought the symbolism would've been less heavy-handed, yes,' the young woman murmured. 'But beyond that, I wasn't really expecting very much. Every other time, it's been a brief lapse into blackness. I suppose that means this time it's final.'

She trailed off anxiously.

'I have no idea what you two are talking about,' the boy said angrily. 'All I understand is that I'm on a raft, and it's not moving. Well, I don't want to sit here with you people any longer than I have to! Since we're not moving, I'm going to move myself!'

He edged towards the side of the raft. The older man watched him, curiosity mingling with contempt. The boy stepped off the raft into the ocean and attempted to swim. He gritted his teeth and screwed up his face, trying to keep from shouting out. But it was no use. Within ten seconds he was yelling in pain, and returning. He pulled himself, gasping, back onto the raft.

'Don't you dare laugh at me!' he said, angrily. 'How was I supposed to know the sea was boiling?'

The woman dipped her hand into the water, as if to confirm the truth of what the boy had said. She pulled it out with a yell.

'It feels like my skin is being stripped away with acid!' she exclaimed. 'You're right!'

The greasy-haired man muttered something under his breath It might've been 'Typical!' but he had turned away to survey the expanse of ocean, and none of the others heard him.

'I thought we wouldn't be able to feel any pain now,' the woman said, directing her statement at the man, whom she seemed to have decided was the one with the answers. 'I thought we wouldn't feel anything.'

He took a long time to answer her, as if he was trying to figure out how best to frame his thoughts in a way she would understand.

'I would've been inclined to agree with you,' he said finally, 'but I should've know that my troubles wouldn't end with death.'

At the mention of the dreaded word, the young girl, who had so far neither spoken to, nor acknowledged the others, burst into a fresh bout of sobbing, with renewed vigour.


	2. Chapter 2

‘So, we are dead?’ asked the boy. ‘This isn’t just some crazy dream?’

‘I don’t know about you – I don’t even know who any of you are – but I’m certainly dead,’ said the greasy-haired man. ‘The snake came, it bit me, I was poisoned, I died.’

‘I think we must be dead. And if we’re stuck on a raft together – a raft that doesn’t move – there must be a reason,’ said the woman.

She looked out across the water musingly.

‘This looks like the Mediterranean around where I grew up. Do you know I never saw those lands again after Brutus took me away to Britain – Alba as it was then?’

‘Who’s Brutus?’ asked the boy in belligerent tones.

‘Brutus.’ The woman sighed. ‘Brutus, the start and centre of all my problems. Always charging in at the head of an invading army, always wanting to take and have and subjugate. It took him 3000 years to realise that he could get what he wanted far more easily by asking and listening and thinking, and by then he no longer wanted the same things anyway. Oh, how many troubles would’ve been averted if I had kissed him when I first met him, when I was merely Cornelia!’

‘I might’ve misunderstood you, Cornelia, but did you just say that this Brutus lived 3000 years? That doesn’t make any sense. Did they have Genesis even back then? That’s insane,’ said the boy.

‘What is “Genesis”?’ the woman asked. ‘And it is not really correct to call me “Cornelia”. I haven’t been “Cornelia” for a long time. I was also Caela, and then Noah, and at the same time I was … well, I think it would be best for you to call me Noah. That was the name I died with.’

‘And yes,’ she continued, ‘Brutus – or rather, Jack, as he is now, has lived a very long time. As have many others of us who were caught up in the Game – Stella and Loth and Harry and Matilda and Erith and Ecub and Silvius and Ariadne and Grace and my Weyland. Poor, poor Weyland, left with that empty house! He’ll hate that! I suppose he will sell it now, or perhaps let Jack and Grace move in – no, Weyland wouldn’t like to have Jack in our house. They barely tolerated one another and in the years since Grace came back, things have been even worse – Stella and Harry had to act as go-betweens, can you imagine?’

Noah finally realised that the words had been tumbling, unmediated, out of her mouth, and she stopped talking, looking slightly embarrassed.

‘While you regaled us with the stream of your rather incoherent consciousness, this raft has travelled forwards,’ the man said, regarding Noah from his guarded eyes.

‘Really?’ asked the boy.

The crying girl lifted her head from her knees and took a quick look around at the ocean before settling back into her huddled position.

‘We’re not moving now,’ Noah said.

‘The wind must’ve stopped,’ the boy said.

‘There’s no wind in death,’ Noah said. ‘At least, that’s what Asterion – Weyland, my husband – used to say. He should know. He spent much more time being dead than the rest of us. There were thousands of years between his first couple of reincarnations.

‘Not for me – oh, except for the first time, when Weyland was controlling us all, thinking to find the kingship bands on his own. But you won’t understand what I’m talking about.

‘Look at me! A Mistress of the Labyrinth and I can’t fathom the strangeness of the land of the dead! Why the sea? Why the raft? Why the three strangers? Weyland would say that I should keep quiet and try to work out the meaning of my situation. Oh, Weyland, how am I going to live without you? We fought and killed and lived and loved for millennia, and now I’m here, and you can’t follow me.’

‘Weyland was your husband?’ asked the boy.

‘Yes,’ Noah replied. ‘We were married for a relatively short time in our long, long lives. But it was the best period, for both of us. I knew it was, for him, even if the last years were very difficult. After Grace, our daughter, was trapped – and even after she came back – it was very hard for any of us to be happy. Brutus never spoke to either of us again, and there was still a part of me desperate for Brutus’ love and approval, and Weyland sensed this. It hurt him, there was always that jealousy of Brutus, that fear that perhaps when I had chosen him, Weyland, I was settling for second-best. I was never able to – I wish – oh, it’s stupid!’

Noah broke off with a choked sob.

‘What do you wish?’ asked the boy, who seemed to have been taken in by her words in spite of himself.

‘I wish we’d all been better at talking to one another. I wish we’d all been able to admit that we had lived so long with each other that our relationships were very complicated. I wish I’d been able to explain to Weyland that although I was Noah, and loved him, I was also Cornelia and Caela, who had yearned for Brutus, and that it didn’t diminish my love for Weyland. We had a child together, and we couldn’t save her, and we all blamed ourselves – Brutus blamed himself, but he blamed us too – and none of us was able to speak about the all the complicated things we truly thought and felt.’

‘Nobody ever really speaks the truth,’ said the boy. ‘It’s better to keep things private and hidden.’

‘Maybe there is hope for the youth of today!’ said the man, his mouth quirking into an odd smile. ‘That’s a very sensible attitude. Only the weak feel the need to let every emotion be known to the world. Only the stupid think to share every thought with those around them.’

Noah turned on him, eyes blazing.

‘I think that’s a _terrible_ attitude! How unspeakably harsh! If Weyland and I had been more open with each other, the last years of our marriage might not have been filled with so many heavy silences. Oh, all the things we left unspoken and yet known! You have no idea how much I regret not telling Weyland that I loved him, that despite my history with Brutus I would always love him, that for the 3000 years before I had walked into his Idyll on Idol Lane I had merely existed, not lived! 

‘So many words not spoken, so many feelings kept inside, and all because I thought that since I had lived long, I would live forever, with many years yet to say those words and express those feelings!

‘It is cruel to keep everything locked away, cruel to yourself and cruel to others. If only I could go back!’

Noah glared at the black-haired man, who had turned his back to survey the ocean. But the teenage boy had been listening to Noah with speculative eyes, weighing up what she had said. 

He opened his mouth as if to respond to her, paused, and seemed to reconsider.

‘Did you notice,’ he said at last, ‘that while you were speaking, the raft moved forward some more?’


	3. Chapter 3

Noah looked around with some surprise. 

‘No, I had not noticed. I suppose I was too wrapped up in my own recollections. But we seem to have stopped again,’ she said.

The black-haired man got an odd expression in his eyes, calculating and curious, but none of his companions noticed. The young girl had taken a break from her crying and was wiping her red-rimmed eyes with the back of her hand.

The teenage boy seemed to have listened to Noah’s story in spite of himself.

‘So this … this _Weyland_ was your husband? But you loved someone else, Brutus? And you all lived forever? Sounds more complicated than Presh and me, and that’s including the 'Arena.’

He trailed off.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Noah, ‘but it’s too confusing talking to you without knowing your name. What are you called? And what is this “Arena”?’

The boy glared at her for a moment, clutching his hands across his body in an oddly vulnerable gesture, as if Noah’s questions were a violation. 

‘Allyman. Allan Manne, really, but everyone always called me Allyman, in Brummingham and at the ’Arena. Except Presh, she sometimes called me Allan. Sometimes.’

He winced, as if the recollection hurt him.

‘Presh?’ asked Noah.

“Presh was … I guess you could say she was my girlfriend, except the idea of something as ordinary as a _girlfriend_ in the ’Arena is insane. She was from China, she was _wicked_ at acrobatics – that was why she survived so long, even after she got too old, too big, to be the kind of performer we were looking for.

‘She was the only person I ever respected. Even Ashmaq –’

But Ashmaq, whoever that was, would have to wait. Overcome, Allyman suddenly slumped over, curling his neck forwards so that it hung over his knees. His shoulders shook. He was crying.

Slowly, carefully, Noah crept forward. She placed a tentative hand on Allyman’s shoulder. With a strangled cry, he shook her off, and sat up straighter, chocking, swallowing his sobs.

‘I didn’t save Ashmaq. I didn’t respect him and I hated him for being afraid, for not being strong like me. He was terrified, and his fear made him clumsy, and he fell, and they – and THEY were watching! Did his fall – screaming, tumbling, twenty feet to the floor of the ’Arena, five seconds of shrieking adrenaline – prolong their lives? I’m sure it must’ve, and I didn’t save Ashmaq, and I worked for them, for the people who killed him, and even after he died I despised him for being weak, because he was afraid and I wasn’t.’

‘You and Presh and … Ashmaq were in a circus called the Arena?’ asked Noah. ‘You look like a child. How old were you when you …’

‘When I died?’ asked Allyman. ‘I was sixteen. But I wasn’t a child. I was one of the _peb_ – that was our word for “people” – and then I was a recruiter for the ’Arena.’

‘ _Peb_!’ he said with disgust. ‘We weren’t people. What kind of person scouts at gymnastics competitions for children to abduct? A person wouldn’t have got Presh pregnant – that was a death sentence for her. If only I could know that Joella – ugh, relying on Joella!’

‘What about Joella?’ asked Noah, recognising that Allyman did not want to talk about the pregnant Presh and steering the conversation towards less dangerous waters.

‘Joella. That stupid, interfering _bitch_! She was never one of us, she wasn’t of the _peb_ , but she found out all our secrets. Presh tried to kill her, once. And then Joella showed up again after they found out about me and Presh, after they’d taken Presh away. Joella was such a little mouse, burrowing in, sneaking around. She showed up at the ’Arena again, somehow managed to get the next lot of _peb_ organised to break out. Then I found her.’

Allyman paused briefly, remember Joella’s face blanching, her mouth widening in horror, when the girl had turned a corner and found herself face to face with him. She’d started babbling about Presh being imprisoned in the desert with other pregnant girls, offering up the information as if in the hope of exchanging it for Allyman’s silence.

‘Meddling bitch!’ he said again. ‘ “Think of Presh, think of the baby!” she said to me,’ and Noah and the dark-haired man, listening to the tone and not the meaning of Allyman’s words, realised what it was that Allyman could not forgive: this Joella had made him find goodness in himself, and it was unbearable that she, a person beneath contempt, was the instrument of his redemption.

‘I just wish I knew if Presh was still alive, if she was okay. To have to trust _Joella_ to save her!’

He was silent for a few minutes. The raft drifted forwards, unheeded. And then,

‘ “ _Hip, hop, hai. You’re gon die!_ ”’ Allyman said bitterly. 

It sounded as if he was quoting something. He began to laugh. It was a horrible sound.

None of the others on the raft dared to question him.


	4. Chapter 4

The dark-haired man stared out across the still water, carefully avoiding looking at Allyman, as if to acknowledge Allyman’s grief would be the depth of rudeness. He focused intently upon a spot far out on the horizon, willing the others not to speak to him.

The young woman, Noah, piped up suddenly.

‘What is your name?’ she asked.

He was silent for a long time. And when he spoke, it was not to answer Noah’s question.

‘I needed ten more minutes,’ he said. ‘Ten measly, insignificant little minutes. That’s all it would’ve taken for me to run back to the school, run into Potter, and tell him everything he needed to known – the boy was already on his way to find the Dark Lord.

‘I would’ve run into Potter and his friends on the way back to the school. Ten minutes.’

He shook his head again, more in bewilderment than anger. 

Noah, as always, couldn’t let it rest.

‘Why ten minutes? Who is “Potter”? What did you need to explain to him?’ she asked, moving across the raft to sit next to the man.

‘Maybe not ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Potter would not have trusted me. He would have tried to duel me. No Unforgivables, of course, so I would’ve Disarmed him eventually – and then his little friends would’ve jumped in. Yes, twenty minutes,’ he said, decidedly.

Allyman slowly uncurled, unclenching himself from the tight little knot of misery into which he had twisted himself. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he hesitated, and the man continued.

‘He might’ve taken some convincing. Potter. He always did have such contempt for me. Maybe I would have needed longer than twenty minutes. Perhaps thirty. Would Potter have sat still while I explained things to him? Would he have believed me? He always did see things in such black and white terms: good, evil, honour before reason, friends, enemies, a fair fight. Nothing below the surface of things.

‘Granger might’ve listened, she might’ve implored him earnestly to hear me out. But it would’ve been so much uncertain guesswork. I don’t know myself how any of them would have reacted to such revelations.’

‘When I first saw you on the raft, you were clutching your neck,’ said Noah cautiously. ‘I take it there was some kind of battle?’

‘Battle? No, it was too squalid, too paltry for that. Just a brief skirmish. The stuff footnotes are made of. 

‘Would half an hour have been enough? Even if Potter was convinced – and he would’ve argued stubbornly with me, and Weasley would’ve asked idiotic questions, and Granger would’ve insisted there was another way – there would still be the snake to deal with. Would Potter have trusted another to do that work? Or would he have insisted on charging into the fray alone? Possibly the latter. Strategy is not his strongpoint. Ten minutes to find the snake and kill it? Forty minutes, perhaps, then.’

The crying girl let out another gulping sob. It was impossible to tell if she had been listening to the man’s words at all.

‘But would forty minutes have been sufficient?’ the man mused, slumping forward and letting his long hair fall over his face. ‘It’s so difficult to gauge the abilities of other people. There are too many unforeseen complications. And the way things happened … memories are highly imprecise. Did Granger really come forward with a flask? I’m sure Potter took it in his hand. Did he understand? Ah, I think fifty minutes, possibly an hour, would’ve been enough. Just enough time to set out from the Shack. One hour.’

Noah and Allyman were watching him with round, intent eyes, as one might look at a trapped animal. A slight breeze lifted Noah’s hair away from her face and neck. 

‘Who were you fighting?’ asked Noah.

Suddenly, the man exploded, like a wave breaking.

‘For Potter to know – to learn in that way – it is intolerable! So much of me – that memory – he will see me _crying_! And his friends, he will tell them, he is never able to keep things to himself. An hour would not have been enough time, but two hours would have allowed me to do what was necessary, in a manner of my choosing.’ 

‘In a manner of your choosing,’ said Noah ruefully.

‘I just want to _know_ ,’ the man said wearily. ‘There is no way to know if Potter understood, or if he acted correctly. To rely on _Potter’s_ skills of deduction – and the boy won’t be thinking clearly. Just two more hours. Three. Only to be sure. That’s all.’

Allyman appeared to be measuring the raft’s progress. Noah had placed a hand across the crying girl’s shoulder, but she was still looking intently at the man.

He seemed to have felt her eyes upon him. He looked up briefly, caught in her gaze, and then flicked his dark eyes quickly towards the expanse of ocean. He whispered something quietly, a soft susurrus against the silence of the sea.

‘What were you saying?’ asked Noah.

‘Severus Snape,’ he replied. ‘That was my name.’

Noah nodded, aware of the effort it had taken him to say even that much.

‘Three hours would not have been enough time,’ the man, Severus, said.

‘There is not enough time in the world to do what needed to be done. It has always been too late. There was never enough time.’

The crying girl shook Noah’s hand off her shoulder. Allyman, feeling the raft’s forward motion, nodded as if something about which he had been wondering had just been confirmed.

Severus looked at Noah, nodded tightly, and then looked away. The soft wind, which had flared up when he began talking, ceased once more to blow.


	5. Chapter 5

Allyman stood up with a lurch, causing the raft to rock and lurch. With an acrobat’s poise, he stepped swiftly across the boards until he was standing over the crying girl.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

The girl looked at him through tear-stained eyes.

‘What?’ she asked, shakily.

‘Everyone else has told their story. Who are you? Why are you dead?’

‘You don’t have to put it so bluntly, Allyman,’ said Noah. She was looking at the girl with a mixture of compassion and pity.

‘What?’ said Allyman angrily. ‘You’d prefer me to tiptoe up to her, put my arms around her shoulders and tell her everything’s going to be all right, that we must trust each other if we’re to get through this? What complete _bullshit_! We’re trapped on a raft, we _don’t_ know each other, and I don’t trust other people, so why should they trust me?’

‘There’s no need to be so pessimistic,’ Noah began, only to be cut off by a contemptuous snort from Severus.

‘She needs time,’ said Noah. ‘We’ve got plenty of time. She’ll talk when she’s ready. There’s no point in being so confrontational, Allyman.’

Allyman shot Noah a look of pure hatred and muttered something under his breath. It might’ve been ‘you would never have survived in the ’Arena’. 

Noah moved so that she was close beside the crying girl. Having learnt from her mistake, she did not attempt to touch the girl, but she turned and looked at her with an understanding expression on her face.

‘I know it’s scary,’ Noah said. ‘It’s a strange place, and we’re strange people, and you look young, so you probably didn’t expect to die. You probably weren’t ready –’

‘Nobody is ever _ready_ to die!’ Severus interrupted Noah’s speech in scathing tones.

Noah continued as if she hadn’t heard the interruption.

‘ – you weren’t ready, and this whole business must’ve been a great shock to you. It’s a hard situation to deal with, but I promise you you’ll feel much better if you dry your tears and talk to us. I felt so much better after I talked to the others about my life – my _lives_ , really – and I’m sure that Allyman and Severus feel the same.

‘What do you think? Are you ready to talk to us?’

Allyman had been listening to this speech with an incredulous expression, as if he could not quite believe anyone could be that naïve and sentimental. He brushed his red hair away from his face with frustration, glared at Noah, opened his mouth as if to berate her, and then thought better of it. Gritting his teeth, he addressed the girl in placating tones.

‘Noah is right,’ he said. ‘Talking did make me feel a bit better, and a lot less angry. I’m sorry I spoke so angrily to you before. That wasn’t nice of me. It’s hard for me to be calm – I did not die well, but that’s not your fault. I’m sorry.’

The girl nodded tightly, her gaze flicking briefly to Allyman’s and then lowering swiftly, as if she felt uncomfortable under his scrutiny. She made no move to talk, though.

Severus rolled his eyes and muttered something about ‘ungrateful, stubborn teenagers’, but when Noah asked him if he had anything to contribute, he fell silent.

‘I know what you’re saying,’ said the girl, her voice so soft that it could barely be heard about the sound of the sea, ‘but I can’t. I really, really can’t.’

She looked as if she was about to start crying again.

‘I wish I could help you,’ she continued. ‘I really do. But it’s too soon. I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m not brave like you.’

The raft skipped forward, propelled by a sudden blast of air.

‘Try,’ urged Noah. ‘Start with something easy. What was your name?’

The girl drew her legs up under her chin and clutched her knees. She couldn’t have looked more vulnerable if she tried. She spoke, and seemed to address the still water, rather than her companions on the raft.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I am afraid.’

‘I know,’ said Severus.

The raft drifted forwards heedlessly on the empty sea.


	6. Coda

There is no wind in the land of the dead. It is an airless, soundless, empty realm, defined by absence. But every so often, lives leave imprints there – lives that were so loud, so fierce, so _determined_ in their living that their echoes are forced through into the vast, silent domain of the dead.

In the land of the dead, everything is transitory and impermanent, and such echoes vanish quickly, swallowed up in the unmoving void. The land does not retain the memory of these imprints for long.

Any traces of lives that manage to force their way through are soon erased. They are little more than the track of a raft across an endless, still ocean.


End file.
